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The Wildrose Party was rocked Monday when MLAs Kerry Towle and Ian Donovan crossed the floor to join Premier Jim Prentice’s Tory government.

Towle, the MLA for Innisfail-Sylvan Lake, has been one of the Progressive Conservative government’s toughest critics over issues such as long-term care for seniors while Donovan, the MLA for Little Bow, has served as the Opposition’s agriculture critic.

In a legislature news conference, Prentice introduced them as “two individuals I have admired from a distance.”

“They are both tough-minded people. They both have a passion for serving Albertans,” said Prentice, who noted that the two MLAs were offered no inducements to join the government and had asked for nothing.

Both Towle and Donovan said they felt they could better serve their constituents within the government.

“It’s incredibly difficult,” said Towle.

“But I felt I had done all that I could in the role that I was in. Over the last 10 days I’ve spent a lot of time chatting with my constituents and hearing from them that they wanted us to come together.”

Donovan said he had also heard from his riding that they wanted him to join the government.

“I’m impressed with the new leadership,” he said of Prentice, who took office in September.

Donovan and Towle said they weren’t aware the other MLA was considering crossing the floor.

Wildrose has been in tumult since the PCs swept four byelections in October. Party Leader Danielle Smith had asked for a leadership review following the losses, but that plan was scrapped when caucus members offered her support.

Smith has shuffled staff and called for a new direction for Wildrose at the party’s recent annual general meeting.

Towle said “the continued fraction on the direction of the leadership” was one factor in her decision.

On Monday afternoon, Smith thanked the pair of departing MLAs for their service to Wildrose, but said they would have to answer to their constituents for their defections.

“We believe in providing a strong and principled alternative to an old and tired government,” Smith said, declining to take questions from reporters.

“Until today, these were principles my former colleagues espoused as well. Now they will have to answer for their actions both in their constituencies and in the legislature.”

The defection of Towle and Donovan will leave the Wildrose with 14 MLAs. The party elected 17 MLAs in the 2012 election, but Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre MLA Joe Anglin recently left the caucus just before Smith planned to have him expelled.

The Tories will now hold 63 of the legislature’s 87 seats and the defections will shore the four-decade-old government in rural southern Alberta, where they were shut out of the ridings — except Banff-Cochrane — in the 2012 general election.

Donovan has operated a grain farm in Mossleigh for 20 years. Towle, who lives in Innisfail, is a real estate broker who has also worked in health care.

Anglin, who had forecast more defections when he left caucus, said Monday he was not surprised some of his former colleagues have left Wildrose given “the turmoil” in the Opposition caucus.

“I don’t think it’s one thing. It’s the culmination of a lot of factors,” he said. “That party really needs to get its act together. They are in damage control and I don’t think they can save it. They’re in trouble.”

Anglin said he hasn’t made any overtures to the PC party because he likes his independence.

But the one-term MLA said the defections are a credit to the new leadership Prentice has brought the PC party.

“Clearly he has demonstrated the ability to bring people together,” he said. “But there are bigger tests ahead for him.”

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